


However Long

by JinkyO



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Boys In Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Slice of Life, Sparring, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25486375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinkyO/pseuds/JinkyO
Summary: Nicky contemplates death and what it means to lose or be left behind.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 9
Kudos: 199





	However Long

"Or what, Joe?" Andy growled. She turned her head and spit, the telling red glob staining the hard-packed earth, her split lip still bleeding. She dropped down into a crouch, small knife glinting in her hand. "You'll kill me?"

They had been at it all day. Nile was a good fit, a good fifth, but now they were four again, a tenuous four, and it was time to readjust. The first sign of trouble came when Nile and Andy squared off in the sparring circle with weapons – USMC KA-BAR and labrys. Nicky walked the perimeter of the circle and watched how the young warrior wielded her sharp combat knife to fend off Andy’s attacks with the double ax. Nile was good. Andy was better. She disarmed Nile with a bone-cracking swing and a hard elbow to the nose and as Nile groped blindly for her knife, Andy went in for the kill shot – and stopped.

Nicky looked up from the action to find Joe’s eyes on him already. They’d both seen the hesitation. Andy was mortal now and that changed everything. Nicky gave a small nod and stepped back. Joe put his head down and ran straight at Andy. He caught her stomach with his shoulder and knocked her off her feet, knocked the ax from her hand, knocked her back with a stiff right hand.

“Fuck!” Andy cried, already scrabbling to her feet.

She came up with Nile’s KA-BAR and the bloodthirsty grin that was as familiar to Nicky as breathing. He smiled. This was the Andy they needed to see today. Nile joined him at the edge of the sparring ground, holding her shattered arm close to her body as the bone, muscle, and sinew healed. Nicky picked up the labrys. Together, they watched the two warriors squared off.

Joe took up a defensive stance, fists raised, a wary eye on the knife. She came at him fast, the knife a sparkling instrument of death. With a preternatural awareness honed by centuries of practice, Joe ducked the blade and circled to his left until he was planted in front of Nicky and Nile, instinctively finding cover in the battle.

Andy lunged forward savagely.

Nicky tightened his hold on the pommel of the ax. Standing next to him, watching just as closely, Nile gasped. The blade met bare skin, soft flesh, and was answered with hard fists and grappling holds, stomp kicks, and the near snap of the neck. Joe grin and pushed Andy away.

Andy was mortal and Nile was a baby and Booker… Booker was somewhere out in the world on his own, and none of this felt good.

“Come on Joe, stop playing around.” Andy came in fast, uncoiling in a burst of lethal energy, bare arms and carbon tempered steel and a thousand years of deadly experience. Joe deflected the blade, but she made contact with her body, a hard fist to his throat and the follow-through: his neck caught in the crook of her arm, the knife wavering sharp and lethal at his throat.

Lethal to a mortal.

Lethal to Andy.

“Enough,” Nicky said. He was tired of pretending.

The two warriors separated. Joe found his place at Nicky’s side, in the life-affirming warmth of Nicky’s hand at his back. Andy spit the blood from her mouth once again and hurled the KA-BAR away, planting it tip down into the hard earth.

“We'll figure it out, Andy,” Nicky said softly. “We’ll adjust.”

“Will we? Because the next set of villains we tangle with won’t be pulling their punches.” Andy ran a quick hand through her hair before extending it to Nicky for her ax. “Don't set a place for me tonight,” she said, sheathing the labrys. “I'll grab something to eat while I'm out.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Nile asked, questioning this oldest of warriors with a boldness of youth that Nicky envied.

The nearest town was 20 miles away from this rustic stone farmhouse they were holed up in. A tourist trap in the shadow of the Spanish Pyrenees, thick with pilgrims walking the Camino Del Santiago – a test for Copley.

“I can't stay in this house forever. When my time comes, it comes,” Andy said tightly.

“Okay. I'll go with you.”

“You're going to babysit me?”

Joe went still in his arm and Nicky knew that same note of tension was playing in both of their minds. Nile had moved forward, blocking Andy’s path to the house and escape beyond.

“No, I'm going because I want another look at that painting in the wine shop. Who knows, it could be a lost Velázquez,” Nile answered, a mischievous grin splitting her face. “That, and we need more Tinto Figuero. We finished off the last two bottles last night.”

Andy leveled her head and eyed Nile warily. The younger woman was not _asking_ to come along. “Alright,” she said at last. “Grab your gear and your wallet.”

“Sure,” Nile said, the smile still on her face as she dug her wallet from her pocket and started counting the bills inside. “Take me out on the town and make me pay for it.”

Nicky and Joe watched as the two women disappeared inside the stone farmhouse to make ready for a night on the town, whatever that entailed.

“More lamb stew for me then,” Joe said once they were alone.

Nicky squeezed his hand over Joe’s shoulder. “More of whatever you want tonight. You’ve more than earned it.”

Dinner was a quiet affair with compliments to the chef and wild speculation about Andy and Nile’s adventures in town. Afterward, they took their coffee in the small courtyard behind the house, the sweet creamy stuff made to Joe’s taste, Nicky’s strong and black. Perhaps not the best choice for so late in the day but Nicky doubted that either of them would be sleeping soon anyway. He stretched out on the cushioned settee, bare skin brushing against Joe as they savored the rich brew. The sun began its long descent over wheat fields and the distant horizon beyond.

“She would be shit at working intel, she can barely work her phone,” Joe said, finally broaching the subject that had occupied both of their minds since this afternoon.

“That’s Copley’s job now anyway.” The sun had disappeared and now the dark blue night sky was melting to black and the first stars were beginning to make their appearance. “She’s fantastic at strategy…”

“Yeah, when she’s there in the fight. You saw her today, Nicky. She’s scared.”

“I was scared too,” Nicky said softly. The word was too mild, too calm for what he really felt when any time could be the last, whether some sick fuck’s laboratory or this quiet back yard with its golden wheat backdrop. “She’s slit your throat ten, fifty, a hundred times before -and you always come back. But what if…”

“Then you would go on, yeah? You’d keep Andy alive as long as you can. You’d keep training Nile. Hell, I even give you permission to bring Booker back if that’s what you need to do. That’s what happens if I die, Nicky.”

“You’re feeling magnanimous tonight,” Nicky said, an amused smile playing over his lips. Joe had been the angriest at Booker’s betrayal; loyalty ran deep in his lover. He had been right, of course, there was a price to be paid, and yet – “Maybe Book had the right idea about this death thing all along,” Nicky whispered.

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means,” Nicky said, his voice low and tired. “Finding you - _living_ with you- is the thing, the only thing, that has made these past 900 years bearable.”

Joe set his empty mug aside and rose. “Leave the dishes,” he said, reaching out his hand.

This was all Nicky had ever wanted from this blasphemy, the warm touch of his hand in Joe’s, fingers entwined under a starry sky. God had cursed him to live a life ten times over, and at the same time blessed him with this lover, the love of all those lives.

Someone would wash the dishes eventually. 

After 900 years you lose all the bullshit, Nicky thought, closing the bedroom door behind him. He was scared. If Andy could die, Joe could die. He could die.

_He would die._

“What would you do?” Nicky asked. “What if I went first?”

Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed, stripping out of his woven sandals. He looked up, a crooked smile on his face. “I’d come and find you. This world is full of Merrick’s— creative madmen. I’d find a way and I’d come after you.”

He'd seen Joe in all manner of dead: battered, skewered, riddled with gunshots, racked by poison. Images that lived in constant contrast to the beautiful sight of his man as he was now: alive and stripping out of his clothes, his body lean and tanned in the night skylight. Alive and smiling, strong white teeth framed by his beard, crooked finger beckoning him to bed.

"How would you do it?"

Nicky hated that he'd asked, that he couldn't let this go. He hated feeling like a child who needed the reassurances of a fairytale. When their time came, his, Joe's, there was nothing either of them could do about it. He hated the thought of it but still, he needed to know.

“Something messy,” Joe answered immediately and dropped down to sit. “Messier than the guillotine. Truck convoy, landmine, hitch a ride on the next space shuttle, something.”

A wry grin curved his lips as he crossed the room and fit himself between Joe’s open knees. The French Revolution had been a surprising bust for them both. He smiled down at Joe as he began pulling out of his shirt. “You don’t explode in outer space, you know? You drown, no oxygen.”

No need to sugarcoat it. Nile had only confirmed what all of them had guessed. Quynh had drowned, and she came back, and she drowned, and she came back. Nicky tasted the bile at the back of his throat.

“Soviet nuclear research facility, then.” Joe pressed a kiss to his stomach, breath hot on Nicky’s skin, fingers undoing Nicky’s pants.

Nicky slipped his fingers through Joe’s soft curls, reveling in the spring of them against his stroking thumb. “You could come back with four arms and two heads,” he countered, kicking out of his shoes, playing along with the morbid game.

“Double my chances of coming up with a better plan the next time,” Joe said, his hands resting on Nicky’s hips. He raised his head, the teasing banter set aside as his dark eyes gleamed solemn and true. “And the time after that, and the time after that, however long it took, Nicolo.”

His breath caught in his throat at the sober words. Nicky dragged his hands from the soft curls and cupped them over Joe’s face. His heavy beard tickling under his palms, his eyes still fiercely fixed to Nicky’s face. Love was another inadequate word, too mild and too calm. In the end, this is what they had, their will to stay together however long it took.

“You’ve got that look on your face,” Joe said softly.

Nicky tilted his head, brows drawing together slightly.

“You know the one,” Joe said, pulling Nicky down to the bed with him. “That serious look you get just before you surprise me and do something romantic.”

Nicky grinned. “How can it be a surprise,” he said, stretching himself out atop Joe so he could feel the strum of life pulsing through arms, chest, cock, and legs, “if I’m signaling my move in advance?”

“The surprise is in how you’ll follow through.” Joe’s words were muffled, his lips nuzzling a spot just under Nicky’s ear.

“You don’t know what I’m planning to do then? Now?”

“I have an idea, sure.” Joe tightened his hold on Nicky and rolled them both to the side. “You’ve been brooding all night.” He brought his fingers up and began tracing the outline of Nicky’s lips. “When our time comes, it comes. We have no control over that.”

Nicky tasted the sharp bile again, fear and anger manifested, then just as quickly calmed when Joe pressed in for a slow kiss. He arched into the kiss. Flesh and blood and bone and heart, alive and here.

“ _This_ you can control,” Joe murmured against his lips. “So, stop moping and fuck me? Yeah?”


End file.
